Cost guide
What drives the cost of a commercial security system
This page does not contain a price, and that is deliberate. What it contains is the list of things that actually decide your number, so you can read a quote properly and arrive at a survey knowing which questions matter. If you want a figure, the honest route to one is a survey.
Why there is no number here
A published range would mislead most of the people reading it
Commercial security pricing is not like buying a product. The same brief on two buildings of identical size can produce very different figures, because most of what you are paying for is the work of getting cable and equipment into a specific structure, and structures differ.
That leaves a page like this with two options. It can publish a range wide enough to be technically true, which tells you nothing you did not already know. Or it can publish a narrower figure that reads as helpful and is wrong for most readers, which is worse, because you will budget against it. We have taken the third option: explain what the variables are, so that when you get real quotes you can see what is driving them and tell a considered one from a package with your building's name on it.
What follows is in rough order of how much each factor tends to move the figure, though the order itself varies by site.
The variables
Six things that decide your number
None of these is a line item you can look up. All of them are things a surveyor establishes by walking the building.
Positions and what each must achieve
Not the camera count. A position given the job of identifying a face at an entrance needs different optics, mounting and lighting from one watching a yard for movement, and reading a plate is different again. Two sites with the same number of cameras can differ substantially because one is specified to detect and the other to identify.
Cable pathways
Usually the biggest single variable and the one buyers expect least. Accessible ceilings and existing conduit are cheap; core drilling, exterior trenching, fire-rated penetrations, hard lids and older buildings with unknown wall construction are not. This is labour, and labour is the bulk of an install.
New build versus retrofit
On new construction the pathways go in before the walls close and the cost of a run is a fraction of what it becomes later. On a retrofit you are working around an occupied building, out of hours where the space is in use, and discovering what is behind the walls as you go.
Retention and storage
How long footage must be kept multiplies straight into storage, and it is often set for you, not chosen: a licensed cannabis premises in California must retain 90 days under the Department of Cannabis Control's regulation, and other sectors carry their own requirements. Resolution and frame rate multiply the same figure again.
Existing infrastructure
What is already installed can reduce the number or inflate it. Usable cable, a sound rack and adequate power are savings. An unsupported recorder, legacy credential technology that is no longer safe to run, or cabling that fails certification are costs that only appear once somebody looks.
Door count and monitoring
Access control scales per opening, and each door brings hardware, power, a pathway and its own egress considerations. Monitoring is the other axis: a monitored system carries an ongoing service relationship where an unmonitored one does not, which changes the shape of the cost rather than only its size.
The costs that are not equipment
Software, licensing and the things that recur
A quote that covers only hardware and installation is incomplete, and the gaps are predictable. There are four of them.
- Software and licensing. Video management software is frequently licensed per camera or per recorder, sometimes as a subscription and sometimes as a perpetual licence with paid upgrades, and cloud platforms move the whole cost from capital to recurring. That is not automatically worse, but it is a different commitment and it should be visible when you compare quotes: the two models are set out on cloud versus on-premise video management.
- Monitoring and the alarm permit. Monitoring is an ongoing service, not a product. Where an alarm system is monitored, San Diego requires an alarm permit from the police department — SDPD Form 1067, renewed annually — before the system is monitored, and repeat false activations carry their own consequences. The case for monitoring, and the evidence about what unverified alarms actually produce, is on monitored versus unmonitored alarm systems.
- Maintenance. The cost most often left out of a comparison, and the one that decides what the system is worth in three years. Door hardware is mechanical and wears. Battery backups age. Camera housings fill with water at the coast. Credential lists drift out of date as staff join and leave. A system nobody maintains is a system that fails at the one moment it matters, and maintenance and repair is the line that keeps it working.
- Procurement constraints. These can set the equipment schedule before price enters the conversation at all. If you hold or are bidding for federal work, NDAA Section 889 restricts what can be specified regardless of what it costs, and that is a filter applied at design rather than a negotiation — see what Section 889 says and who it binds.
How a real number happens
What a survey does that a phone call cannot
A survey is not a sales visit with a tape measure. It is the process that converts a brief into a specification precise enough to price, and it establishes the things that no phone call can reach: what each position has to achieve and what that requires, what the building is made of and where cable can actually go, what is already installed and whether it can be reused, what the scene looks like at night, and who has to administer the system afterwards.
Out of that comes a coverage plan drawn against your actual building, and a quote that corresponds to it. You get the plan and the findings whether or not you contract with us, because the survey is the work that makes an honest quote possible and we would have to do it before quoting either way.
We do not quote commercial systems from a count over the phone. That is a stated refusal, not a preference. A figure produced from a camera count is a package price, and it resolves one of two ways: it is re-priced after somebody finally looks at the building, or the package gets installed whether or not it fits. Neither is what you asked for. If a contractor gives you a number before seeing the site, the useful question is what they are assuming, and the answer is usually a standard job.
Reading a quote
What to check before you compare two numbers
Two quotes for the same building are rarely for the same work, and the difference is usually in what one of them left out. Before you compare the totals, check that both cover the same scope: the same positions with the same job at each, the same retention period, the same software licensing model over the same term, and the same treatment of the cabling — not one assuming the existing cable is reusable while the other prices in replacing it.
Then check what happens after handover. Whether commissioning is included per position or the system is simply confirmed online. Whether you receive administrative credentials to your own system. Whether certified test results for the cabling are part of the deliverable or an extra. Whether maintenance is quoted at all. These are the items that separate quotes far more often than the equipment does.
One boundary worth knowing while you read: we hold CSLB#976737 as a C-7 low voltage contractor and a BSIS Alarm Company Operator licence, ACO #7501. We do not hold a C-10 or C-16, so we do not work on fire alarm systems; that is coordinated with your own licensed fire alarm contractor. On gates we install and integrate the access control, and the gate operator itself is supplied and installed by your gate contractor. If a quote you are comparing includes fire alarm work or gate automation, it is not comparing like with like, and we work on commercial premises only.
Common questions
Cost questions
Because any figure we published would be wrong for most readers, and a wrong number is worse than none. The cost of a commercial system is driven by things that are specific to your building: how many positions there are and what each has to achieve, how hard the cable routes are, whether there is usable infrastructure already, how long footage has to be kept, and how many doors are in scope. Two buildings of identical square footage can differ severalfold on those variables. A published range would either be so wide it tells you nothing, or narrow enough to mislead you.
No, and we would be suspicious of anybody who does. A phone estimate is priced from a camera count, and the camera count is the least useful number about a camera system. What decides the figure is what each position has to achieve, what the building is made of, and what is already installed, none of which is visible from a phone call. A contractor quoting from a count over the phone is quoting a package and will either re-price after the survey or install the package regardless of whether it fits.
Usually the pathways, and it is the one buyers expect least. Cable routes are labour, labour is the bulk of an installation, and the difference between a building with accessible ceilings and conduit already in place and one where every run needs core drilling, exterior trenching or working around asbestos is very large. Equipment prices are broadly public and broadly comparable between contractors. Pathway difficulty is site-specific and is where quotes for the same building diverge most.
No. We survey the site, put the findings and a coverage plan in writing, and you get that whether or not you go on to contract with us. The reason we can do that is that the survey is what makes an accurate quote possible at all, so it is work we would have to do anyway before quoting honestly. If you take the findings to another contractor, that is a legitimate use of them.